Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Bonding in a Crisis - The Gallery

This photo makes me laugh out loud everytime I look at it. Bonding during a Friday night trapped in your office.

We form so many great bonds, my dogs, childhood friends, distant cousins. But the ones I’ve formed in work are some of the strongest because often they’ve been borne out of adversity.

It's the connection you form by being part of the same crisis.

What a crisis brings to a team is a strong bond. A deeper understanding of how your colleagues behave in the midst of an emergency and the strength you all take from coming out of the other side. Battered, bruised - but smiling, stronger and much better equipped for the future.

And with memories and photographs that will make you smile (and wince!) for years to come.

there she is again...!

The 2007 floods tested me and my colleagues to the limit. The challenges were everywhere. Continuing to deliver a service as demand increased, but without computers or an office. Keeping a staff rota running 24 hours at locations across the county when people couldn’t travel. Keeping morale up when staff were spending their spare time queuing for water.

Empathy is a big part of crisis communications, if you understand what people are going through you do a much better job, and we did.

As a result I feel a strong and lasting bond with the staff, organisations and reporters I worked with during that emergency. It improved the way we worked together and turned us into a slick, well-oiled machine the next time a crisis occurred.

Because from that experience we knew who we could trust. We saw the best and worst of people and shared something that would never be repeated.

So I now have a bond with a small group of random people that will stay with me for the rest of my life (mainly built around smelly socks, long nights without sleep and improvised beds) even though many of us don't work together anymore.

It was an unreal time, working with amazing people and it’s something I never want to forget.

This post was inspired by The Gallery on the Sticky Fingers Blog. Click on the icon to read more blogs.